SYNOPSIS

“MY JOURNEYS”
[As a paraplegic]


“Ngicela amafone (give me your phones)” he exclaimed, followed by a bang! That definitely was not a door slam!

“Ma’am I am going to ask you a few questions please reply as much as you can,…. full name please ….. I think I have her…. she is trying to speak…… do you have medical aid...look in her pockets … bags….ooh here I found something…. It’s her medical aid card; Zukiswa Nzo is her name….”

I still cannot tell till this day whether it was an attempted robbery or an attempted high jacking on the other hand, the medical aid card that was in my bag/pocket helped me accumulate my living days, but what they didn’t know at that time, was; that medical aid was null and void. I can elaborate!

All of this happened 2 years ago 2day (16 February), (Yes! I am writing this article on the “anniversary” of my accident two years ago), and that was a plain coincidence.

I started at SABC on the 2nd of January this year, and noticed: people just didn’t know how to approach me, I later learned that my kind is really scarce at number 1059 Schoeman AND when some did get the chance to approach me, I would have to make them feel at ease to converse with me BUT something seemed unusual to those who got a chance to engaged with me, NONE of them posed the question “what in the world happened to you child?” which I thought would be human nature to be curious about such things, not even my manager asked, even though I could tell they were DYING to know! So I thought to myself (Eish but this is a lovely environment to work in, where people are not in each other business, and that is rare too. Until one day a stranger walked in the building and all she needed was an introduction to me and after exchanging our exaggerated “nice to meet yous” she jumped straight into “shame what happened?” That raised some eyebrows and I could hear a few “thank God someone finally asked on my behalf”and I must have spent about 30 minutes telling her the story and answering some of her questions.

As a rule I have two stories to tell (that I learned from paraplegic veteran), the comprehensive and the summary, and that is dependent on the recipient analysis I make.

I had a one on one with my manager one day and opened up to her, stating that I would love to educate people about Paraplegics, I cannot talk about disabled people as a whole for there are different types of them and every one of them is different, Infect, every paraplegic is also different for they too have different injuries.

One Saturday (24th January) she FINALLY sent me a text message asking me to write an article about paraplegics and educate the staff. I read the message out loud to my boyfriend and uttered “what do you think “his comeback was something like “what do you have to think about?”. And there I had my answer.

Some of the topics Id like to engage if required are my journeys (hence the column title “my journeys”) in hospital, rehab, facing the real world, accepting the condition (if there is such a thing), love life, relationships with God, family, friends, challenges in society, challenges in work place, How do paraplegics like to be treated, what have I gained as a paraplegic (Yes! there are a lot of positives and things you gain as a paraplegic), and many more.

To those who are dying to know but do not know how to ask, here is the story: It was not an MVA ( motor vehicle accident), believe it or not, even when I visit the GP some nurses would write MVA on my file, I learned that it’s a general assumption, but I mean, the nurses too?! Eish, jah neh! It is actually what the doctors would call a Gun Shot Wound, well at least that’s what it would read on my file after making it clear that: “I was shot! “(For crying out loud). So NO! I didn’t get a cent from RAF (road accident fund), which is also another general assumption. Oh how I wish it was an MVA, and then it would make everyone’s life easy, even the nurses, hey?!

Moving along…..It was a gunshot wound, making me an SCI, T4 incomplete lesion paraplegic… HUH? Yes that’s exactly how I felt too in the beginning, now you see the need to have a permanent column?
….To be continued